Love Monkey: A Novel

Front Cover
Zondervan, Oct 13, 2009 - Fiction - 368 pages

Many men aim high; Tom Farrell dares to be average. While his friends accumulate wedding rings, mortgages, and even, alarmingly, babies, Tom still lives alone in his rented apartment with nothing but condiments and alcohol in his refrigerator. He spends Saturday mornings watching cartoons and eating Cocoa Puffs out of an Empire Strikes Back bowl, and devotes the rest of the weekend to his other favorite hobbies: sports and girls. His credo, to think and act like a thirteen-year-old boy at all times, has worked well enough to land him a decent job writing headlines for the New York Tabloid. But neither his personal life nor his professional life has any forward momentum; he's occupied the same cubicle since the first George Bush was president and is currently "between girlfriends." At thirty-two, it starts to occur to him: There's a fine line between picky and loser.

Enter a sly, beautiful coworker named Julia. After a few torrid dates, Tom is hooked. "She's like cleaning behind my refrigerator. A once-in-a-lifetime thing." But the closer he gets to Julia, the more elusive she becomes. Frustrated, Tom seeks the dubious advice of his buddy Shooter, a shallow sexual gladiator, and wonders why he keeps getting into arguments with Bran, his smart, sarcastic "default date." But then tragedy strikes, and everyone's attitudes toward life and love change -- and even Tom begins to see himself in a new light.

By turns riotous and tenderhearted, Kyle Smith's Love Monkey is the most candid and excruciatingly funny exploration of the male mind and libido since High Fidelity.

 

Contents

Section 1
30
Section 2
48
Section 3
63
Section 4
67
Section 5
123
Section 6
142
Section 7
152
Section 8
159
Section 15
223
Section 16
228
Section 17
250
Section 18
260
Section 19
267
Section 20
271
Section 21
282
Section 22
297

Section 9
169
Section 10
180
Section 11
187
Section 12
193
Section 13
200
Section 14
218
Section 23
299
Section 24
306
Section 25
317
Section 26
328
Section 27
352
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Kyle Smith is the author of Love Monkey, the hit novel that was adapted into a CBS television series starring Tom Cavanagh and Jason Priestley. He is also a movie critic for the New York Post, which posts his reviews online each week at nypost.com. He lives in New York City.

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